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Heidi Lerner's Column in  AJS Perspectives

Online resources for talmud research, study, and teaching fall 2010.

Introduction

Online resources for research, analysis, and teaching of the Talmud are well-represented on the Web. Digital collections and databanks of Talmudic texts and manuscripts are becoming increasingly available. An array of websites and social networking applications offer introductory material, insights, and linguistic and educational tools to assist in the study of the Talmud at all levels. New computing tools such as optical character recognition, three-dimensional computer graphics, text encoding, text and data mining, and image recognition enable scholars to look at the Talmud in interdisciplinary and innovative ways, individually and collaboratively. This article aims to guide scholars, faculty, and students to some of the best sites currently available. Not all of these sites are academic or critical in their conception or sponsorship, but they can be useful for their content and interface, and readers should visit them for more information.

Full texts of the Tanakh, Mishnah, Tosefta, Babylonian Talmud, Talmud Yerushalmi, and the Mishneh Torah of Rambam can be found in text format at the Ma'agar  Sifrut ha-Kodesh  and  Mechon Mamre . The National Library of Israel (formerly JNUL)  Digitized Book Repository  contains scanned parts or complete editions of some of the earliest editions of the Talmud.

While the above-noted sites offer the full text of the Talmud as either JPEG graphics or in text format, a complete  Talmud Bavli  that has been scanned and undergone optical character recognition (OCR) has been mounted at the Hebrewbooks.org site with permission from Moznaim Publishing. This online edition offers full-search capabilities, and it is also possible to copy and paste any part of a page into a Word document or other tool for educational and teaching purposes. In addition to the six orders of the Mishnah, the site also includes the full text of the Gemara, Rashi, and Tosafot, a Daf Yomi calendar, and an index of commentators.

Additional full-text resources freely available on the Web include:

»  The Soncino Babylonian Talmud  in English translation is available online in its entirely as a PDF and about 63 percent in HTML format.

»  The  Primary Textual Witnesses to Tannaitic Literature  is part of a large Bar-Ilan project. The site includes full transcriptions of all extant manuscripts of the Tosefta, Mekhilta, and work is being done on the Sifra.

»  Tosefta Online  offers a host of online resources about the Tosefta, including several manuscripts, the full text of the first printed edition, an English translation of the text, and an interesting blog. A similar site exists for the  Talmud Yerushalmi .

In 1991, Bar-Ilan University launched the  Responsa Project  in a CD format. In 2007 it was uploaded to the Internet on a platform provided by C.D.I. Systems. Among its trove of rabbinic texts are the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmuds with commentaries, Midrashim, the Zohar, and a collection of more than eightythousand responsa. Access to the majority of the materials at the site is via subscription.

Manuscripts

The National Library of Israel's  Online Treasury of Talmudic Manuscripts  brings together Talmudic manuscripts held only by other institutions. The manuscripts are indexed by standard citation.

The  first printed edition of the Yerushalmi  was published by Daniel Bomberg in Venice (1523–24). The only extant manuscript that was used by him for his edition is housed at the University of Leiden and was recently digitized in its entirety.

The Cairo Genizah includes a large number of Talmudic fragments. A noted characteristic of the Cairo Genizah is that fragments of the same work are very often scattered geographically in different libraries and collections. A number of libraries are digitizing their collections of Genizah fragments. The Taylor-Schechter Research Unit of the Cambridge University Library, which houses the  largest single collection of Cairo Genizah fragments , has recently received a grant to digitize all their fragments.

The  Friedberg Genizah Project  is spearheading an effort to create a single unified database of Genizah fragments which, while geographically dispersed, are becoming unified under one virtual roof. It is now possible to compare online Talmudic fragments from the same manuscript that were housed in two different libraries and view them side by side on a single screen.

Websites and Tools

For novices, a good place to learn how a standard printed Talmud page is constructed is the hypertext  Page from the Babylonian Talmud . This site functions as a commentary on the constituent parts that commonly comprise a typical page. Linked to the page image are overviews of the Tosafot and other commentaries, glosses, the Gemara, and Ner Mitzvah. Princeton University Library has issued another basic resource:  Chapters of the Talmud  is a site in Hebrew that helps users locate the tractate of a particular chapter of the Talmud, if they only have the title.

Oral Roberts University has created  The Babylonian Talmud Research Guide . This resource includes an abbreviations guide and instructions on how to locate a topic in the Talmud.

The Halacha Brura and Birur Halacha Institute offer the  Index to Commentaries on Aggadot of the Talmud . This site indexes the commentaries of the aggadic material of the Talmud found in 130 books of the Rishonim and Acharonim. Users can browse the site by Talmud tractate.

A Proposed Guide for Citing Rabbinic Texts  has been mounted on the Web.

The website  Database of Midrashic Units in the Mishnah  contains all the passages in the Mishnah that contain midrashic elements (interpretations of scripture). Users can search by tractate, biblical reference, code, rabbi, and formal features.

Dictionaries

Marcus Jastrow's A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (London, 1903) is available online in PDF at  HebrewBooks.org  and in a searchable format at the  Tyndale Archive of Biblical Studies .

Hebrew Union College has mounted  The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon  which allows the user to search the Lexicon in both Aramaic and English.

Several blogs related to Talmudic issues traverse the academic and public landscapes. These can offer scholars the quickest and best ways to keep up with the latest developments in Talmudic research. They bring together and mix, often in quirky ways, musings on scholarly dilemmas, reviews, research news, and conference announcements and informal reports. They include the  Talmud Blog ,  Menachem Mendel ,  Hagahot , and  On the Main Line .

"Daf yomi" is the daily study of a passage of Talmud that can be completed in seven years. This project is well suited to the global electronic environment offered by the Web, and many study aids are available for learners. Kollel Iyun Hadaf presents a number of free Hebrew and English resources on its website  Dafyomi Advancement Forum .  E-Daf.com  and DafYomi.org  offer JPEG images of the Vilna Shas so that users can follow along as they listen to various shiurim. Other daf yomi audio lessons can be found at  MyShiur.net .

New Directions

In the past thirty years, the library community and other providers of digital content have created a substantial repository of Talmudic and rabbinic texts. New technologies and interdisciplinary collaborations are emerging, encouraging scholars to take advantage of these resources to develop new methods of scholarly research and teaching of the Talmud.

An early prototype of an interactive book was produced by David Small at the MIT Media lab in the first part of the new millennium. In the  Talmud Project , the typographer created a program using threedimensional, movable type to simultaneously display the Talmud and related commentaries on the same screen. Several dials allow the reader to trace ideas from one text to another, examine translations, and find text in the larger context of the full corpus.

In the early part of this decade, a group of Jewish studies faculty and computer scientists at the  Collaborative Research Centre at the University of Cologne  developed a prototype of a technology-enhanced learning environment for a Talmudic tractate.

An exciting area for digital humanists is computer-based text mining and text analysis. This is a technology that enables scholars to discover and analyze patterns in the texts. Computer scientists at Bar-Ilan University have developed  CHAT: a System for Stylistic Classification of Hebrew-Aramaic Texts  to tackle a number of scholarly issues related to a corpus of Hebrew-Aramaic texts. Using this technology, the authors hope to be able to verify authorship of specific corpora, determine the chronology of various documents, and determine from which different versions of the same text might a particular text fragment be taken.

There is increasing interest in the field of face recognition in image and videos. Up until now, the methods for identifying and reuniting "matches" from within the Cairo Genizah have been manual. "Matches" are leaves or fragments from a particular manuscript that have been identified as emanating from the same codex or document and, in the case of the Cairo Genizah, have been dispersed among many different institutions and private collections around the world. Utilizing face recognition technology, a team of computer scientists at Tel Aviv University in partnership with staff from the Friedberg Genizah Project have developed a  computer-assisted method  of automating the system of locating matches from the Cairo Genizah so that they can be properly described and documented.

As we look to the future, traditional methods of Talmud study will continue to be enhanced and even challenged by the emerging digital environment.

Heidi Lerner is the Hebraica/Judaica cataloguer at Stanford University Libraries.

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Exuberant Torah Research

In שׁוֹרָשִׁים ( Shorashim– ‘ roots’ for nursery) and שְׁתִּילִים ( Shteelim–  ‘saplings’ for kindergarten) we just completed our second week of תּוֹרָה  (Torah ) exploration for our שָׁבוּעוֹת ( Shavuot -Weeks) theme.

This week, we conducted more research, this time our torah was our subject. We split into groups so we could spend time examining all of the parts of the תּוֹרָה  (Torah) .

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What shapes do we notice in the Torah scroll? (I see two) cylinders. (I see four) Circles One cylinder is bigger than the other! Because there’s more parchment rolled up on that side. (I see) Rectangles. Black and white. This part is bumpy because there’s other pages ( the rolled-up part) . There’s white lines on the parchment! There’s little scratches! Those diagonal ones are because it’s old . Those ones (lines) are part of the Torah . (It’s) black and white. Not clean white. It reminds me of paper but it’s different. 

We got some practice writing words found in the תּוֹרָה  (Torah) .

We played with the shapes of the תּוֹרָה  (Torah) :

We also explored “תּוֹרָה  (Torah) Service Actions”, the kinds of things that Jewish people might choose to do with the תּוֹרָה  (Torah) .

Like Parade with the תּוֹרָה  (Torah) :

Kiss the תּוֹרָה  (Torah) :

Undress and read the תּוֹרָה  (Torah) :

Here are some things that children said about participating in “תּוֹרָה  (Torah) Service Actions”,

It felt like I was the king of the castle. I liked how I felt when I was walking. I felt proud, feeling like myself again, at school I didn’t feel useful for the day, I felt useful.  I liked being the leader with the תּוֹרָה  (Torah) .  I felt proud because of it.  It felt good, like you are a kid, like kids don’t usually do this. It feels good to go around with the תּוֹרָה  (Torah) , if you have never done it before.

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Moses History Research Paper

Moses ( Mosheh in Hebrew) is recognized in the Old Testament as a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet and he is best known for rescuing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. He is the most influential prophet in Judaism. Other major world religions, such as Christianity and Islam, recognize him as well. The Book of Exodus records that Moses was born during the period of Jewish enslavement in Egypt. At his birth, the Egyptian Pharaoh issued a decree that all male Hebrew infants were to be thrown into the river Nile.

However, Moses’ mother, Jochebed, desperate to save the life of his son, floated him in a basket in the Nile, and he ended up being adopted into the Egyptian royal family (Exodus 2:1-10). Growing up in the Egyptian palace made him to develop, the pride, vision, and courage necessary for liberating the Jews from slavery. These significant personal changes could not have been possible if he lived as a Hebrew slave. The life of Moses is full of several unique aspects.

At one time, he killed an Egyptian slave-master who was oppressive to his people, the Children of Israel. Thereafter, afraid that Pharaoh could kill him, he escaped across the Red Sea to Midian. Here, he looked after the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, on the slopes of Mt. Horeb until one day God appeared to him on a burning bush. Tending the flocks of his father-in-law for forty years made Moses to develop other significant personal changes in leadership for delivering his people from slavery.

Consequently, he set out on a mission to liberate his people from slavery. Following the Ten Plagues that fell on Egypt, he led the Israelites out of the nation and across the Red Sea. Thereafter, they gathered around Mt. Sinai and compassed the boundaries of Edom. In spite of living up to the age of one hundred and twenty years, he passed on before reaching the Promised Land.

Besides his major accomplishment of delivering the Israelites from slavery, he also had other achievements. Through him, God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) at Mt. Sinai. This achievement has made him to be called the “The Lawgiver.” He also wrote other moral laws that are still being followed by the Judaists.

Moses also wrote the first five books of the bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In addition, no other prophet, save Moses, had the experience of talking to God “face to face”: “But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” (Numbers 12:7-8, New International Version).

The life of Moses has tremendous effects on the society today. The religion of Judaism is based on the Torah (written law) and Mishnah (oral law) whose authorship is ascribed to Moses. These two forms of law shape the practices of the Jewish people today. In Christianity, Moses is viewed as a representation of the holy law of God.

The life and the teachings of Jesus Christ emphasize and expound this in the New Testament. In Islam, he is a symbol of “great importance” as he is mentioned and described more than any other prophet in the Qur’an. Generally, he is portrayed in ways that parallel the prophet Muhammad.

Sigmund Freud, a committed atheist, gave a psychoanalytical view of the life of Moses putting forward that he was an Egyptian nobleman who followed the monotheism of Akhenaten (Freud & Jones, 1967). He held that Moses was killed in the wilderness. This theory has resulted in the sense of patricidal guilt that has been at the center of Judaism for quite some time now.

Although this theory has received a significant scholarly attention, most people regard it as a pseudo history. The deist Thomas Paine, referring to the story in Numbers 31: 13-18, said that the character of Moses, as described in the Bible, is not a great role model that modern moralists can follow (Paine, 2008). However, he looked at him narrowly, not considering other aspects of this great biblical character.

Annabel Keeler described Moses from the Muslim perspective: “Among prophets, Moses has been described as the one ‘whose career as a messenger of God, lawgiver and leader of his community most closely parallels and foreshadows that of Muhammad” (Solomon, Harries, & Winter, 2005, p.55). She says that Moses served the role of Muhammad’s forerunner in giving the divinely revealed system of law.

The life of Moses impresses me, but I am surprised at the criticisms of the deists, agnostics, and atheists on the life of this influential bible character whose teachings still form the backbone of most religious practices today. His demonstration of courage, despite his weaknesses, in delivering the children of Israel from Egypt is inspirational. More so, his belief in God, despite the stiff opposition he was facing from the people he was leading, also amazes me.

Reference List

Freud, S., & Jones, K. (1967). Moses and monotheism . New York: Vintage Books.

Paine, T. (2008). The Age of Reason : Easyread Edition. Sydney: Accessible Publishing systems.

Solomon, N., Harries, R., & Winter, T. (2005). Abraham’s children: Jews, Christians and Muslims in conversation. London : T&T Clark.

Zondervan Bible Publishers. (2008). Holy Bible: New International Version . Grand Rapids, MI : Zondervan.

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• Moses's Story in the Exodus Book
• "The Laws" by Plato
• The Exegetical Analysis of Exodus 34:1-10
• The Book of Exodus in the Bible
• Geography of the Land, the Israelites, Passed to Canaan
• Mt. Sinai Hospital's Expansion Problem
• Flocking: The Animal Behavior Model
• Women and Family in Chinese History
• The "Moving In" Story by Emma McKenna
• Book of Exodus in Judeo-Christian Theology
• Morality Is Rooted in the Character of God
• The New Testament as One of the Major Books for Christians
• Religious Leaders and the Spread of Christianity: the Personality of the Greatest Influence
• Human Potential in Rig Veda, Genesis and Homer’s The Odyssey
• “Confessions” a Book by St. Augustine

Read our research on: Gun Policy | International Conflict | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

About 1 in 4 u.s. teachers say their school went into a gun-related lockdown in the last school year.

Twenty-five years after the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado , a majority of public K-12 teachers (59%) say they are at least somewhat worried about the possibility of a shooting ever happening at their school. This includes 18% who say they’re extremely or very worried, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand public K-12 teachers’ views on school shootings, how prepared they feel for a potential active shooter, and how they feel about policies that could help prevent future shootings.

To do this, we surveyed 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14, 2023. The teachers are members of RAND’s American Teacher Panel, a nationally representative panel of public school K-12 teachers recruited through MDR Education. Survey data is weighted to state and national teacher characteristics to account for differences in sampling and response to ensure they are representative of the target population.

We also used data from our 2022 survey of U.S. parents. For that project, we surveyed 3,757 U.S. parents with at least one child younger than 18 from Sept. 20 to Oct. 2, 2022. Find more details about the survey of parents here .

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

Another 31% of teachers say they are not too worried about a shooting occurring at their school. Only 7% of teachers say they are not at all worried.

This survey comes at a time when school shootings are at a record high (82 in 2023) and gun safety continues to be a topic in 2024 election campaigns .

Teachers’ experiences with lockdowns

About a quarter of teachers (23%) say they experienced a lockdown in the 2022-23 school year because of a gun or suspicion of a gun at their school. Some 15% say this happened once during the year, and 8% say this happened more than once.

High school teachers are most likely to report experiencing these lockdowns: 34% say their school went on at least one gun-related lockdown in the last school year. This compares with 22% of middle school teachers and 16% of elementary school teachers.

Teachers in urban schools are also more likely to say that their school had a gun-related lockdown. About a third of these teachers (31%) say this, compared with 19% of teachers in suburban schools and 20% in rural schools.

Do teachers feel their school has prepared them for an active shooter?

About four-in-ten teachers (39%) say their school has done a fair or poor job providing them with the training and resources they need to deal with a potential active shooter.

A smaller share (30%) give their school an excellent or very good rating, and another 30% say their school has done a good job preparing them.

Teachers in urban schools are the least likely to say their school has done an excellent or very good job preparing them for a potential active shooter. About one-in-five (21%) say this, compared with 32% of teachers in suburban schools and 35% in rural schools.

Teachers who have police officers or armed security stationed in their school are more likely than those who don’t to say their school has done an excellent or very good job preparing them for a potential active shooter (36% vs. 22%).

Overall, 56% of teachers say they have police officers or armed security stationed at their school. Majorities in rural schools (64%) and suburban schools (56%) say this, compared with 48% in urban schools.

Only 3% of teachers say teachers and administrators at their school are allowed to carry guns in school. This is slightly more common in school districts where a majority of voters cast ballots for Donald Trump in 2020 than in school districts where a majority of voters cast ballots for Joe Biden (5% vs. 1%).

What strategies do teachers think could help prevent school shootings?

The survey also asked teachers how effective some measures would be at preventing school shootings.

Most teachers (69%) say improving mental health screening and treatment for children and adults would be extremely or very effective.

About half (49%) say having police officers or armed security in schools would be highly effective, while 33% say the same about metal detectors in schools.

Just 13% say allowing teachers and school administrators to carry guns in schools would be extremely or very effective at preventing school shootings. Seven-in-ten teachers say this would be not too or not at all effective.

How teachers’ views differ by party

Republican and Republican-leaning teachers are more likely than Democratic and Democratic-leaning teachers to say each of the following would be highly effective:

• Having police officers or armed security in schools (69% vs. 37%)
• Having metal detectors in schools (43% vs. 27%)
• Allowing teachers and school administrators to carry guns in schools (28% vs. 3%)

And while majorities in both parties say improving mental health screening and treatment would be highly effective at preventing school shootings, Democratic teachers are more likely than Republican teachers to say this (73% vs. 66%).

Parents’ views on school shootings and prevention strategies

In fall 2022, we asked parents a similar set of questions about school shootings.

Roughly a third of parents with K-12 students (32%) said they were extremely or very worried about a shooting ever happening at their child’s school. An additional 37% said they were somewhat worried.

As is the case among teachers, improving mental health screening and treatment was the only strategy most parents (63%) said would be extremely or very effective at preventing school shootings. And allowing teachers and school administrators to carry guns in schools was seen as the least effective – in fact, half of parents said this would be not too or not at all effective. This question was asked of all parents with a child younger than 18, regardless of whether they have a child in K-12 schools.

Like teachers, parents’ views on strategies for preventing school shootings differed by party. 

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

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‘Back to school’ means anytime from late July to after Labor Day, depending on where in the U.S. you live

Among many u.s. children, reading for fun has become less common, federal data shows, most european students learn english in school, for u.s. teens today, summer means more schooling and less leisure time than in the past, about one-in-six u.s. teachers work second jobs – and not just in the summer, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Prestigious cancer research institute has retracted 7 studies amid controversy over errors

Seven studies from researchers at the prestigious Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have been retracted over the last two months after a scientist blogger alleged that images used in them had been manipulated or duplicated.

The retractions are the latest development in a monthslong controversy around research at the Boston-based institute, which is a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. 

The issue came to light after Sholto David, a microbiologist and volunteer science sleuth based in Wales, published a scathing post on his blog in January, alleging errors and manipulations of images across dozens of papers produced primarily by Dana-Farber researchers . The institute acknowledged errors and subsequently announced that it had requested six studies to be retracted and asked for corrections in 31 more papers. Dana-Farber also said, however, that a review process for errors had been underway before David’s post. 

Now, at least one more study has been retracted than Dana-Farber initially indicated, and David said he has discovered an additional 30 studies from authors affiliated with the institute that he believes contain errors or image manipulations and therefore deserve scrutiny.

The episode has imperiled the reputation of a major cancer research institute and raised questions about one high-profile researcher there, Kenneth Anderson, who is a senior author on six of the seven retracted studies. 

Anderson is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber. He did not respond to multiple emails or voicemails requesting comment. 

The retractions and new allegations add to a larger, ongoing debate in science about how to protect scientific integrity and reduce the incentives that could lead to misconduct or unintentional mistakes in research. 

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has moved relatively swiftly to seek retractions and corrections. 

“Dana-Farber is deeply committed to a culture of accountability and integrity, and as an academic research and clinical care organization we also prioritize transparency,” Dr. Barrett Rollins, the institute’s integrity research officer, said in a statement. “However, we are bound by federal regulations that apply to all academic medical centers funded by the National Institutes of Health among other federal agencies. Therefore, we cannot share details of internal review processes and will not comment on personnel issues.”

The retracted studies were originally published in two journals: One in the Journal of Immunology and six in Cancer Research. Six of the seven focused on multiple myeloma, a form of cancer that develops in plasma cells. Retraction notices indicate that Anderson agreed to the retractions of the papers he authored.

Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist and longtime image sleuth, reviewed several of the papers’ retraction statements and scientific images for NBC News and said the errors were serious. 

“The ones I’m looking at all have duplicated elements in the photos, where the photo itself has been manipulated,” she said, adding that these elements were “signs of misconduct.” 

Dr.  John Chute, who directs the division of hematology and cellular therapy at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and has contributed to studies about multiple myeloma, said the papers were produced by pioneers in the field, including Anderson. 

“These are people I admire and respect,” he said. “Those were all high-impact papers, meaning they’re highly read and highly cited. By definition, they have had a broad impact on the field.” 

Chute said he did not know the authors personally but had followed their work for a long time.

“Those investigators are some of the leading people in the field of myeloma research and they have paved the way in terms of understanding our biology of the disease,” he said. “The papers they publish lead to all kinds of additional work in that direction. People follow those leads and industry pays attention to that stuff and drug development follows.”

The retractions offer additional evidence for what some science sleuths have been saying for years: The more you look for errors or image manipulation, the more you might find, even at the top levels of science. 

Scientific images in papers are typically used to present evidence of an experiment’s results. Commonly, they show cells or mice; other types of images show key findings like western blots — a laboratory method that identifies proteins — or bands of separated DNA molecules in gels. 

Science sleuths sometimes examine these images for irregular patterns that could indicate errors, duplications or manipulations. Some artificial intelligence companies are training computers to spot these kinds of problems, as well. 

Duplicated images could be a sign of sloppy lab work or data practices. Manipulated images — in which a researcher has modified an image heavily with photo editing tools — could indicate that images have been exaggerated, enhanced or altered in an unethical way that could change how other scientists interpret a study’s findings or scientific meaning. 

Top scientists at big research institutions often run sprawling laboratories with lots of junior scientists. Critics of science research and publishing systems allege that a lack of opportunities for young scientists, limited oversight and pressure to publish splashy papers that can advance careers could incentivize misconduct. 

These critics, along with many science sleuths, allege that errors or sloppiness are too common , that research organizations and authors often ignore concerns when they’re identified, and that the path from complaint to correction is sluggish. 

“When you look at the amount of retractions and poor peer review in research today, the question is, what has happened to the quality standards we used to think existed in research?” said Nick Steneck, an emeritus professor at the University of Michigan and an expert on science integrity.

David told NBC News that he had shared some, but not all, of his concerns about additional image issues with Dana-Farber. He added that he had not identified any problems in four of the seven studies that have been retracted. 

“It’s good they’ve picked up stuff that wasn’t in the list,” he said. 

NBC News requested an updated tally of retractions and corrections, but Ellen Berlin, a spokeswoman for Dana-Farber, declined to provide a new list. She said that the numbers could shift and that the institute did not have control over the form, format or timing of corrections. 

“Any tally we give you today might be different tomorrow and will likely be different a week from now or a month from now,” Berlin said. “The point of sharing numbers with the public weeks ago was to make clear to the public that Dana-Farber had taken swift and decisive action with regard to the articles for which a Dana-Farber faculty member was primary author.” 

She added that Dana-Farber was encouraging journals to correct the scientific record as promptly as possible. 

Bik said it was unusual to see a highly regarded U.S. institution have multiple papers retracted. 

“I don’t think I’ve seen many of those,” she said. “In this case, there was a lot of public attention to it and it seems like they’re responding very quickly. It’s unusual, but how it should be.”

Evan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Quantum Physics

Title: demonstration of logical qubits and repeated error correction with better-than-physical error rates.

Abstract: The promise of quantum computers hinges on the ability to scale to large system sizes, e.g., to run quantum computations consisting of more than 100 million operations fault-tolerantly. This in turn requires suppressing errors to levels inversely proportional to the size of the computation. As a step towards this ambitious goal, we present experiments on a trapped-ion QCCD processor where, through the use of fault-tolerant encoding and error correction, we are able to suppress logical error rates to levels below the physical error rates. In particular, we entangled logical qubits encoded in the [[7,1,3]] code with error rates 9.8 times to 500 times lower than at the physical level, and entangled logical qubits encoded in a [[12,2,4]] code with error rates 4.7 times to 800 times lower than at the physical level, depending on the judicious use of post-selection. Moreover, we demonstrate repeated error correction with the [[12,2,4]] code, with logical error rates below physical circuit baselines corresponding to repeated CNOTs, and show evidence that the error rate per error correction cycle, which consists of over 100 physical CNOTs, approaches the error rate of two physical CNOTs. These results signify an important transition from noisy intermediate scale quantum computing to reliable quantum computing, and demonstrate advanced capabilities toward large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing.

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How Do You Get Rid of Shredded Paper? Think Twice Before Recycling.

By Melanie Pinola

Melanie Pinola is a writer focused on home-office gear. To find the best paper shredder, she has shredded enough junk mail to fill several bathtubs.

It turns out, I’ve been recycling all wrong. After the latest round of testing nine paper shredders , I thought I’d put the resulting 65-plus gallons of shredded paper out for recycling. But when I asked my local sanitation department if it would prefer the shreds in clear bags or cardboard boxes, the representatives said neither.

Instead, they instructed me to toss the shredded paper in with the trash.

But wait: Isn’t shredded paper still paper, and thus recyclable? Isn’t throwing away shredded paper wasteful? The answer to both questions is, well, kind of. Here’s what you need to know about the best way to dispose of shredded paper.

Check your local guidelines

The American Forest & Paper Association confirms that shredded paper is indeed recyclable. But whether shredded paper is acceptable for recycling in your town or city is another story.

So it’s best to double-check with your local sanitation or public-works department to see what you’re supposed to do with your shredded paper. Local guidelines vary—and those guidelines may or not be on the publicly accessible website or in published brochures.

For example, San Franciscans are encouraged to either place shredded paper in a stapled brown paper bag labeled “SHREDDED” or compost the shredded paper. But if you live in Rhode Island, shredded paper isn’t accepted for mixed-recycling pickup; residents can compost their shreds, throw them in the trash, or drop off shredded paper at a disposal site in Johnston, Rhode Island.

Why shredded paper isn’t always accepted for recycling

Shredded paper can be a disaster for some recycling facilities. “Shredded bits of paper are too small to be properly sorted by our facility’s machinery,” said Jared Rhodes, director of policy and programs at the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC). They can contaminate other materials and even lead to equipment malfunctions, he added.

An article in The Providence Journal expounds on the problem, noting that when local households sent their shredded paper for recycling in paper bags, the shredding machines ripped the bags, and tiny shreds flew everywhere. When residents tried using plastic bags (or even double-bagging in plastic), the shreds still flew everywhere—and plastic wrapped around the equipment, shutting the facility down for cleaning and repairs.

As a solution, some localities outsource the recycling of shredded paper to dedicated facilities that are equipped for it, but that costs additional time and taxpayer money. You can help reduce the load by composting your shredded paper, taking documents to be shredded to a community’s free shredding event (they’ll know how to dispose of the shreds), and reducing how much you shred in the first place.

Shred only paper containing sensitive information

Paper is most suitable for recycling when it isn’t shredded, because whole pieces are easier for facilities to sort and have longer and stronger fibers ready to be made into new paper. So it’s best to avoid unnecessary shredding.

To protect your privacy, you should still shred anything with sensitive information on it, of course, such as documents with your Social Security number, financial statements, and medical records.

Royal 14MC 14-Sheet Micro Cut Paper Shredder

The best home-office paper shredder.

This high-security shredder offers the best balance of ease of use, sheet capacity, and price.

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However, some information on a document may be personal but not necessarily sensitive enough to need shredding, such as your name and address; your contact information may already be available on public records or services such as White Pages.

“Consider how much junk mail and spam calls you receive; that’s how known your address and phone number are,” says Max Eddy, Wirecutter’s senior staff writer covering privacy and security. Instead of shredding documents that have only your name, address, and phone number on them, you can cover that information with permanent black marker and then put the sheets into the recycling bin.

Bonus: In addition to helping the environment, reducing how much you shred can prolong the life of your paper shredder. Everybody wins.

This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.

Meet your guide

Melanie Pinola

Melanie Pinola covers home office, remote work, and productivity as a senior staff writer at Wirecutter. She has contributed to print and online publications such as The New York Times, Consumer Reports, Lifehacker, and PCWorld, specializing in tech, work, and lifestyle/family topics. She’s thrilled when those topics intersect—and when she gets to write about them in her PJs.

Mentioned above

• We tested top shredders for use at home and in small offices and found easy-to-use workhorses that can help protect your identity. The Best Paper Shredders  

Further reading

How to Recycle Your Used Electronics

by Nick Guy

Are old computers, smartphones, or monitors taking over your closet? We’ll tell you how to recycle your tech, with privacy tips so you can do so safely.

How to Get Rid of a Used Car Seat

by Christine Cyr Clisset

We talked to experts about the best ways to dispose of a used car seat, and recommend you bring your unwanted seat to Target before May 5.

Why It’s So Hard to Get Rid of Used Mattresses

by Kevin Purdy

Getting rid of a used mattress responsibly can be a challenge—one that will likely only get worse as all-foam, bed-in-a-box options become more popular.

Yes, You Can (and Should) Recycle Batteries. Here’s How.

by Sarah Witman

If you have a container of spent batteries in your home that you don’t know what to do with, these are the best battery-recycling methods we’ve found.